Why you need website legals as a small-business owner

When you’re setting up a business—particularly if you’re a solopreneur—there’s always so much to do. You need a website, a brand, content, services or products, processes… the list goes on.

One of the biggest items on that list is your website, which requires so much time, energy, and love from you. You’ve spent hours writing the copy, days deliberating over the right colours, and weeks trying to make it all look just right.

It can be exhausting.

And that means that often small-business owners get to the end of their website build, breathe a sigh of relief that it’s over, and then move on to the next thing.

During this website development process (unless you have a website developer who is switched on) a vital step is often missed – writing and including the website terms of use and/or privacy policy – either because the business owner doesn’t know about this important step, or they just don’t want to face it because they think it’s too complicated or too expensive to do properly.

Does that sound like you?

Is this the conversation in your head about your website legals?

“I didn’t know I needed them?”

“I have some but have no idea what they mean?”

“I only thought I needed a Privacy Policy?”

“I am not selling anything so I didn’t think I needed anything on my website?”

All the legal requirements for your website… policies, terms and conditions, privacy statements, etc…
Yes, sometimes it can be overwhelming – but it doesn’t have to be!

If you have a website, you need website legals.

And here’s why.

1. Protect your business legally

You’ve built your beautiful business, including your beautiful website, and now you need to protect it.

If a website user takes you to court, your website legals can limit your liability and protect your rights to your website content. When the court considers the relationship between you and the person who’s not happy, they’ll look at what’s defined in your website legals.

If your website collects personal data from users—and this includes asking for their email address for your email list—you are required by law to have a formal privacy policy. If you don’t, you are breaking the law.

2. Build trust with website users

Legal protection aside, your website legals play a huge part in building trust with your website users—who are your potential customers and clients. You are in business. What image does a website without proper website legals convey to your users? Not having website legals could poke a big hole in your credibility. On the other hand, having high-quality website legals that have clearly been written by a professional… well, that looks good. That looks like you’re taking your business seriously.

What website legals do you need?

Most websites contain terms and conditions, a privacy policy, and a disclaimer. If you’re selling products or services directly through your website (i.e., you have a ‘buy now’ button) then you also need an online payment policy that deals with refunds and cancellations and conditions relating to the purchase.

However, the content in your website legals will be unique to your business and how you work. There are common themes throughout all website legals, though. Most include:

limitation of liability (from errors)

disclaimers (stuff you are not responsible for)

copyright of your content

privacy policy (how you manage people’s private information that they provide to you)

How do you create website legals?

I know many business owners use templates or create website legals by copying and pasting from other business’s websites.

You could do this… but, seriously? Copying is bad business practice, no matter how you look at it, and you’re just going to end up with legals you’re not confident to stand behind and that don’t really represent your beautiful business.

Instead of copying from someone else, get help to craft website legals to meet the specific needs and requirements of your business.

Or, if you’ve already created website legals by yourself (even if you’ve ‘borrowed’ them from elsewhere), have them reviewed by a legal professional who knows their stuff.

You’ll end up with website legals that you can be confident represent your business.

Get your website legals sorted

Join me (Shalini Nandan) for an easy-to-understand and action 30-minute webinar where I will be helping business owners just like you work out exactly what you need in terms of website legals for YOUR business.

The webinar is happening live and FREE on Tuesday October 18th, 11am AEDT. The webinar will be recorded and a replay link will be sent to all registered attendees – perfect if you can’t attend live.

Please Note: This is not a sponsored post, nor does Optimise and Grow Online receive any commissions or payments of any kind. We are simply sharing this information because we inform our clients all the time about their website legals and believe that Shalini’s message needs to be shared.

We’d love for you to hit the share buttons too so that other small business owners can protect their business and perfect their website legals too.

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Robyn Kyberd / About Author

Strategic Optimisation + Growth consultant for lean start-ups and change-making entrepreneurs enabling them to grow their business in a sustainable and profitable way. My super-powers are business optimisation, CX, SEO, and leveraging data insights for business growth. #fuelledbycoffee

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